Tell me about Monks in your world.

[Samuel Leming]

The Monk. I've seen more controversy regarding this class than any other in the core rules. In my experience, players usually don't want to play the monk as written. They shoehorn their martial artist character concepts into this class because there's no other way to get a competent unarmed combatant in the standard rules. Usually what they want to play is closer to a fighter, swashbuckler or rogue with unarmed skills.

Do you allow monks in your games? If so, what changes do you make if any? Is there anything you add from other sources?

In the next campaign I'll run, the monk will follow a more western tradition. I'll start with the cloistered cleric from the Unearthed Arcana and modify that using the spontaneous casting rules plus a few other minor modifications.

If a player wants to play a "martial artist", I'll let him build it using the fighter class(or whatever makes sense for that character) and some unarmed combat feats I'm still working on. What I have now doesn't balance very well yet. If a player really wants to play a standard monk as presented, and I've rarely seen that happen in the last twenty-five years, I'll let them. I'll rename the class as Shou Lin or something to avoid confusion and the character will hail from just a little bit past way way waaaaaaaay over there.

Sam

 

[Psychic Warrior]

I remove the multi-class restriction from them (that says they cannot gain gain levels in any other class and still remain a monk). This allows a nice blending of fighter and monk that can make the kind of character that most people think of when they want a bad-ass hand to hand fighter.

I have Dmed and played with exactly 3 monks since 3E came out. 1 under the above rule 2 as written in the PHB. The fellow who is using the above rule is more effective in combat and has really expanded on his character and developed quite a background just based off his blending of fighter classes and monks classes.

 

[Klaus]

http://www.fierydragon.com/DB/DB_OCT27_2004.htm

The origin of monks in Fiery Dragon's World of Karathis... which has no oriental-style region (to date).

 

[Desdichado]

For monks in my game, I use the Defender from Midnight.

However, I'd say the Ranger is the most controversial class, by far.

 

[Nifft]

I like Monks, I've removed the multi-class restriction from my campaign world, and I've made a bunch of Monk-centric PrCs which allow them to leverage multi-classing.

In the game I run, we've got a Monk4/Pal4/GoldenFist4 who's got saves that make my poor little monsters cry.

-- N

 

[adwyn]

PC and NPC monks have been too rare in my game to justify a major place in the campaign. Instead they are refugees from an overseas kingdom of Rakshasa who prohibit weapons of all sorts, hence the rebel groups devoted themselves to styles of combat that don't use weapons.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I've removed them completely from most every campaign I run and not missed them one bit.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

In my games there are usually no monks for 1 primary reasons:
They do not fit into a semi-hellenistic (spelling?) setting nor into a semi-norse setting. Which are what my two games are most like. I did run a more 'typical' d&d game for a long time however that did allow monks.

When I do allow monks I also will remove multiclass restrictions.


Actually I'm thinking of running an oriental/kung fu movie game in which everyone is a high level gesalt (it's an Unearthed Arcana variant) monk/anything else. I think it could be cool.

 

[Wombat]

Current game we have Oathbound (and so far only one player has shown any interest in them).

In the last three games in our group, we had a No Monks rule, as they did not fit the medieval feel of our settings.

 

[Will]

In my game, monks were 'mages of the body,' often but not always attached to various temples.

The various weapons were sorta westernized, though the tradition had an asiatic flavor. In a world with teleport gates, cultural transmission is not so hard...